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For other uses see Nautilus (disambiguation) The Nautilus was the fictional submarine featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). Verne named the Nautilus after Robert Fulton's real-life submarine ''Nautilus'' (1800).
Description The Nautilus was described by Verne as "a masterpiece containing masterpieces." It was designed and commanded by Captain Nemo. Electricity provided by sodium/mercury batteries (with the sodium provided by extraction from seawater) was the craft's primary power source for propulsion and other services. The Nautilus was double hulled, and was further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed was 50 knots. Its displacement was 1356.48 French freight tons immerged (1507 submerged). In Captain Nemo's own words: The Nautilus used floodable tanks in order to adjust buoyancy and so control its depth. The pumps that evacuate these tanks of water were so powerful that they produced large jets of water when the vessel emerged rapidly from the surface of the water. This led many early observers of the Nautilus to believe that the vessel was some species of whale, or perhaps a sea monster not yet known to science. When needed to submerge deeply in short time, Nautilus uses a technique called Hydroplaning which makes the vessel dive down in warped angles, as found from the talks of Captain Nemo. The Nautilus supported a crew who gathered or farmed food from the sea to eat. The Nautilus included a galley for preparing these foods, which included a machine that makes drinking water from seawater through distillation. The Nautilus was not able to refresh its air supply except by surfacing and exchanging stale air for fresh. The Nautilus was capable of extended voyages without refuelling or otherwise restocking supplies. Its maximum dive time was around five days. Much of the ship was decorated to standards of luxury that were unequalled in a seagoing vessel of the time. These included a library with boxed collections of valuable oceanic specimens that were unknown to science at the time, expensive paintings, and several collections of jewels. The Nautilus also featured a lavish dining room and even an organ that Captain Nemo used to entertain himself in the evening. By comparison, Nemo's personal quarters were very sparsely furnished, but did feature duplicates of the bridge instruments, so that the captain could keep track of the vessel without being present on the bridge. These ammenities however, were only available to Nemo, Professor Aronnax and his companions. From her attacks on ships, using a ramming prow to puncture target vessels below the waterline, the world thought it a sea monster, but later identified it as an underwater vessel capable of great destructive power, after the Abraham Lincoln was attacked and Ned Land struck the metallic surface of the Nautilus with his harpoon. Its parts were built to order in Le Creusot, London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris, Prussia (Krupp), Motala (Sweden), New York, etc. Then the pieces were assembled by Nemo's men on a deserted island. Appearances Beside her original appearance in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, the Nautilus also appears in numerous other works: Other Verne Submarines Besides the Nautilus, other submarines figured in Verne books. In the 1896 the pirate Ker Karraje uses an un-named submarine that acts both as a tug to his schooner "Ebba", and for ramming and destroying ships which are the targets of his piracy. The same book also features HMS Sword, a small Royal Navy experimental submarine which is sunk after a valiant but unequal struggle with the pirate submarine. See also Images Image:20000 mobilis in mobili.jpg|Motto of the Nautilus: "Mobile in mobile element" Image:20000_Nemo_Aronnax_plans.jpg|Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax discussing the plans of the Nautilus Image:20000 Nautilus Salon.jpg|The Grand Salon of the Nautilus Image:20000 Nautilus Nemo room.jpg|Captain Nemo's room aboard the Nautilus Image:20000 Nautilus Library Nemo Aronnax.jpg|The library of the Nautilus Image:20000 Nautilus engines.jpg|Engine room of the Nautilus Image:Nemo_Aronax_viewbay_diver.jpg|Main viewbay of the Nautilus Image:Nautilus wrecks.jpg|The silhouette of the Nautilus in the distance (though precisely described in the text, she is never pictured very explicitly in the illustrations) | ||||||||
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